Photography Q: image processing

Grunfeld

I've got a Ricoh GR -- which is a little compact camera but you can control quite a few parameters, and basically I'd love to take even slightly better pictures. So....  a thing was mentioned on YouTube about the idea*  of exposing for the light, say the sky, and even though the darks will be very dark you can process these afterwards.  Fix it in the mix was my understanding.

So... I have a copy of Corel's Afershot 3 which is a lightroom type program.  Apparently.  I don't have a clue about either. 
I took some pics yesterday and so now I have RAW files with the sky okay and the rest of the shot under exposed.
Do I head back to YouTube?  What do I need to learn to make the pic look okay?

* if you wanted to try this, they weren't saying every picture should be done like this

stickyfiddle

Hard to say without seeing the pic, but assuming a straight-ish line between ground and sky you should be able to add a gradient filter to overexposed half the image and keep the other half as it is.

it takes about 10 seconds in Lighteoom but not sure about Aftershot

boogieman

A bright sky against a dark landscape is always going to be a compromise for the camera when it works out the overall exposure. So what you're doing is getting the sky exposure right (if you let the camera do the exposure reading against the darker bits, you risk "blowing the highlights" in the sky, eg you lose some/most/all of the detail, especially in the clouds). 

What you'd need to do then is boost the exposure in the darker bits using PP software to correct it. It's not a difficult process but you do need to know how to do it properly or it'll look naff and very obvious. Basically you'll need to understand layers to do it. Personally I've never got that deep into PP but YouTube would be the obvious place to start. 

I use use a different method btw, I expose for the sky to get the highlights right, then gradually tweak the EV setting to get a decent balance between the darker and lighter sections. Tbh I have a pretty decent camera as well... it does most of the hard work for me. 

strtdv

You'd be surprised at the detail you can pull out of an underexposed photo, but anything that's washed out by overexposure is generally gone for good.

Lodious

I use lightroom for this kind of stuff. It's amazing how a small amount of time spent PP'ing can make a massive difference to an image. In lightroom, it's literally takes seconds to do this kind of thing. The great thing about lightroom is that all the edits are effectively entries in a database, so they are totally non-destructive, so as you get better at PP, you can revisit old images and update them based on improved techniques. It's less than £100 (or c.8 per month) and there are loads of great tutorials out there.

RaymondLin

If you expose for the sky and then push up info from the dark area, the quality of how much information can be pulled will be down to sensor and also what format you shot it with - RAW is the key here.

Personally if you are doing that, I prefer to shoot for the subject, a blown sky is not a problem for me if the faces are well exposed.  

Gulliver

If there are is a way to select and area and increase the exposure in that area, that's what I'd do.  I haven't used Aftershot - but in Camera RAW in photoshop, you can use adjustment brushes.

hywelg

In Aftershot, open the Tone tab, play around with the Exposure, Black Point, Fill range and Fill Light. Leave the Highlights alone.

IF you have chroma noise in the shadows play around with the noise reduction using 'Perfectly Clear Noise Reduction' in the Detail tab.

Then consider taking HDR bracketed shots. Some cameras will do this automatically whilst others you'll need a tripod and take at least three bracketed shots to expose the highlights correctly and the shadows correctly and one or two  in between. In processsing just be careful not to overdo it. There seems to be a trend for HDR that is producing very artificial looking photos.

ThePrettyDamned

Better to use a flash. Does the gr have a leaf shutter? 

It can be done with pp though. 

Grunfeld

ThePrettyDamned said:

Better to use a flash. Does the gr have a leaf shutter? 

It can be done with pp though. 

Cheers for all the replies.
I don't know about the shutter type.  I haven't got a flash other than the built in one.  Flash is a whole new world.

ThePrettyDamned

Grunfeld said:

ThePrettyDamned said:

Better to use a flash. Does the gr have a leaf shutter? 

It can be done with pp though. 

Cheers for all the replies.
I don't know about the shutter type.  I haven't got a flash other than the built in one.  Flash is a whole new world.

It's worth a look in. Fill flash will basically make simple snap shots look nicer. Don't be afraid to use that little in built one, even in decent light - it can provide a catch light for the eyes and reduce shadows. 

However if you can get access to Lightroom (you can get a free trial for 7 days or something) you could experiment by using the brush tool - basically you can select it, choose the size and how it feathers (fades at the edges) and then choose a parameter to change and opacity of effect.

So for you, you may want to increase exposure where you paint by one stop - then you can paint the subject. 

Couple this with a post processing graduated neutral density filter and an all around increase in exposure to get it balanced and you can get a lot of dynamic range from one shot. 

Actual high dynamic range shots made from composites tend to look very sickly and wrong to most people, so maybe avoid that.

The project I'm working on involves heavy, detailed macro work and you can stack focus to get depth of field - again, horribly unnatural to look at, and 3d objects can look flat if you're not careful about how you light it, but in this instance it is the only way to get a good, useful photograph. 

Grunfeld

I know Lightroom is the industry standard but I pretty much can't stand Adobe products for a bunch of reasons -- but to me they're deal breakers.  So that's why I went with Aftershot.  I doubt it's as good but in fairness I haven't really used it and it might do the basic stuff I'd like. 
I'm such a novice with photography that a bit of practice might go a long way!  Hope so.  But man alive, it's time consuming isn't it!  When you're learning I mean.  Like most things I guess.

ThePrettyDamned

Grunfeld said:

I know Lightroom is the industry standard but I pretty much can't stand Adobe products for a bunch of reasons -- but to me they're deal breakers.  So that's why I went with Aftershot.  I doubt it's as good but in fairness I haven't really used it and it might do the basic stuff I'd like. 
I'm such a novice with photography that a bit of practice might go a long way!  Hope so.  But man alive, it's time consuming isn't it!  When you're learning I mean.  Like most things I guess.

I'm far from an expert, but put the hours in and you'll learn. 

I'm good at Lightroom, but learning photoshop. It's a vast program, and only for heavier jobs really. Lightroom does most of what most people need, it's easily enough for a professional photographer to churn out good photos and keep them organised. 

But I do need to learn more photoshop. I've been using it for focus blending and adding a scale onto shots, two things Lightroom flat out cannot do. 

I used to like using GIMP. Not sure what the latest version is like, but I had good times on that, sort of like Lightroom in terms of processing power. 

Axe_meister

One thing I love in Photoshop is curves in lab mode.
Can fix virtually any photo in seconds 

strumjoughlamps

Try using the built in ND filter.

ThePrettyDamned

I just looked and as @strumjoughlamps says, the ricoh has a built in nd filter which you can use to bring the exposure down. This, coupled with the leaf shutter and the built in flash (tiny though it is) means you can really shut down the ambient light and use the flash to give the subject illumination. 

If you wanted a more powerful flash to use in manual mode, there is a teeny fuji one. 

If only it had a 35mm or 45mm equivalent lens.... Sounds like a fantastic camera! Probably great for travel and street, and even landscape. 

JezWynd

If it was in iPhoto I'd recommend adjusting the Shadows, it's a good quick fix.
In Photoshop I'd adjust Levels midpoint first.

strumjoughlamps

ThePrettyDamned said:

Sounds like a fantastic camera! Probably great for travel and street, and even landscape. 

Ricoh produce some of the finest premium compacts IMO, the snap focus mode is absolutely amazing and perfect for street.. they eek lots of detail you can look at a GR image and think its come from a mid DSLR with quality glass.. IQ not as good as Sigma Merrill but for a bayer sensor the Ricoh is amazing.

GR defo one of the best compacts out there if you can live with a fixed 28mm.